THE DOT - if this turns orange or red be alert

Thursday, February 17, 2011

1. It does not feel good sometimes what we do in this line of work but since it may have a great impact I will make an exception by doing some yellow press rumor analysis since it can really be a market mover. The sudden leave of Jobs after his 2nd cancer treatment seemed to have settled the health situation is actually quite a turning point of the overall market with Apple being the heavy weight of plenty indices. Apple made a double 13 daily yesterday but is in week 11. The Full Moon today brings unfortunately a negative pattern Jobs has in his birth chart to full capacity as he has a Saturn / Pluto square on his birth-chart and since Neptun triggered a T-square with that pattern Jobs has his serious cancer problem again. Now the Full Moon will be opposite Neptun on Pluto as the following story hits the yellow press. Lets hope for Steve Jobs that he gets well after all but it any case he will not run Apple anymore which will effect the stock negatively short term and long term.

excerpt

Is Apple's Afterhours Weakness Based On The Assessment Of A Less Than Credible "Doctor?"

As is by now well-known, Apple stock is underperforming after hours following reports of an allegedly sickly-looking Steve Jobs leaving the Stanford cancer center. The National Enquirer has released photos supposedly of an emaciated Jobs, yet one who is not readily identifiable as the Apple CEO. The National Enquirer, who initially reported the news today (to be published tomorrow), talked to critical-care physician Dr. Samuel Jacobson, who said, “Judging from the photos, he is close to terminal. I would say he has six weeks.” That said, given the reliability of The National Enquirer, waiting for further news before jumping to conclusions is advised. Furthermore, as TNW reports, "We’ve done a little digging into Dr. Samuel Jacobson. Jacobson appears to be a Florida based pulmonologist (breathing doctor) – not Oncologist. Which would naturally make you wonder just how qualified he is to diagnose someone via a photo, especially outside of his speciality." Obviously, a prudent question. While there is still no definitive confirmation either way, and Apple has not issued any statement, the stock has moved on the news, and we believe that this information should be shared as it is in the public doman and market moving.

It has beenconfirmed today that Steve Jobs is receiving treatment for cancer in the Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto, California. RadarOninereported today that it’s the same Clinic where Hollywood Actor the Late Patrick Swayze was undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer in April 2009.

There has been no formal confirmation of what type of cancer Jobs is being treated for or if he is being treated at all for cancer from the Apple spokes team. Jobs was not forthcoming about the reason he took a medical leave of absence.

Photographs of the 55-year-old Apple CEO were taken on Febuary the 8th outside the clinic and are reported to be published by the The National Enquirer tomorrow morning.

In one photo, Jobs was getting out of his car a day after a full day of work at the company’s Cupertino campus. The photos show Mr Jobs looking painfully frail and weak, with his jeans and dark top hanging loosely on his 6ft 2in, thin body.

Jobs has previously withheld information on his health, such as when he was treated for a form of pancreatic cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009, something that worries Apple investors who feel the company’s future rests in his visionary leadership.

The Daily Mail spoke to Dr Jerome Spunberg, a certified Oncologist with 40 years experience, who said: “Mr Jobs is most likely getting outpatient chemotherapy at Stanford because the cancer has recurred.”

He continues: “He is terminal. What you are seeing is extreme muscle wasting from calorie depravation, most likely caused by cancer. He has no muscle left in his buttocks, which is the last place to go. He definitely appears to be in the terminal stages of his life from these photos. I would be surprised if he weighed more than 130lb.”

Ever since the advent of QE2, few if any, sellside analysts employed by Too Big To Fail banks have dared to voice a negative opinion of the Chairman's third mandate, that of raising stock prices (for obvious reasons: nobody will bite the hand that feeds them trillion in taxpayer bailout money). Which is why we continue to believe the BofA credit strategist Jeffrey Rosenberg is one of the few men standing who dares to call it how it is. In his latest piece, Rosenberg lays out what is the most harshly (yet diplomatically) worded criticism of QE we have read to date. "In our view, the longer term problem with such a strategy is that in delaying the adjustment to the root causes of the credit crisis, namely excessive leverage in the economy and financial markets, the essential vulnerabilities from that excessive leverage remain. What triggers their realization again is the inflationary shock leading to an interest rate shock that undermines the cheap cost of that debt that currently enables its maintenance." As for the implicit assumption that savings and wealth are inversely correlated, Rosenberg points out the glaringly obvious: "Inflation erodes the value of those savings and decreases their standard of living." The only option left: "Lowering the value of savings creates a powerful incentive to take on investment risk to maintain the real purchasing power of those savings." And while everyone getting aboard the investment ship at the same time is a horrible idea when it happens in one country, it is a guaranteed disaster waiting to happen when it occurs at the global level. Which is precisely what has happened: "Today, we see that same pattern again at play. But this time, it’s not limited to just the US Fed policy. Globally, central banks are pursuing coincident easy money policies. And even in Emerging Markets where the inflation fears stand most acute, the policy rate increases are just keeping up with inflation increases. The result: global negative or zero real policy rates." The entire global "economy", which really means stock market, is now one timebomb, just waiting for the first central banker error-induced 'crack' to appear in the windshield, following which the destruction will be unprecedented.